Epiphanies

Do you know what it’s like to have one of these crazy combustible things that are called “epiphanies.” Quite a few years ago I had one, one that made me realize what was going on in my life, what was most important, and what I had to do to make my equilibrium stable again.

The result was that I quit writing.

Believe it or not, it was a freeing experience, this release from “having” to write. I worked on art, I played with my then very small children, I found a new love for cooking the most mundane things, like pizza dough, pasta sauces of many variety, and fruit salad. I stayed in the yard with the kids. I read every book I could get my hands on. I read Shakespeare’s entire collection of poems, and I memorized some. I took a job working part-time teaching pathetically untalented kids the first endeavors on the violin.

It was nice for a while.

But not writing didn’t last long.

Joyce Carol Oates says in her book (Woman) Writer in the very first chapter, page 3, called Beginnings:

“I begin with the proposition that the impulse to create, like the impulse to destroy, is utterly mysterious. That it is, in fact, one of the primary mysteries of human experience. We can’t hope to explain it but we can’t, evidently, resist speculating about it.”

Since I’ve been on an “impulse to create” in writing as well as art of late, and reading Oates’ book in turn, I’m in incredible awe at how the spontaneous ideas form in our writer’s brains, how we record, and hopefully find sense in the words, how we transgress through unfathomable pits of existence in our brains, which we use only 10% of and yet hold so much intuitive creation. Where does the beginning of creation start and can we forge an unbreakable bond with it so that writer’s block and lack of inspiration never ever haunt us again. It is an epiphany of its own accord.

I only wish to explore it more….

Thanks for reading. Leave your thoughts on inspiration and
where you find yours, and how you get into the artist/writers’
groove, where I hope we all dwell together forever…

One Response to “Epiphanies”

As far as my inspiration goes, I rarely write without music of some sort. It can’t be something that I love to the point of distraction of course and I usually choose the music for the type of writing I’m sitting down to tackle. Sometimes I’ll draw or do something other than writing as you do and I find it very inspiring too. Sometimes it’s just simply looking through a book by a favorite photographer or artist.